Implementing Kanban: Best Practices for Successful Visualization and Optimization of Workflows

Kanban is an incredible asset for software organizations to unlock maximum productivity and efficiency. Drawing on the tenets of visualizing workflows, this system offers a comprehensive way to manage tasks, monitor progress and pinpoint areas of improvement. Although adopting Kanban can be challenging for many organizations, with the right attitude and methodology, it can be mastered with remarkable results.

This article will explore the steps necessary to successfully implement Kanban in software companies, including an overview of the process, understanding employee roles, establishing team rules and policies, setting expectations, providing feedback and support, and tracking performance. By following these tips, software businesses can take advantage of the many benefits that come with using Kanban.

The origins of Kanban

Kanban has its origins in the 1950s and was created by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, as a way to improve the efficiency of the company's manufacturing processes. The name "Kanban" comes from the Japanese words "kan" (signal) and "ban" (board), and it refers to the visual signals and boards that were used to manage work and control the flow of materials in Toyota's factories. Having its origins in the automotive industry shows that Kanban can be applied to contexts beyond technology and software development, although the latter industries host most of the mentions to the technique.

The technique is based on the principles of just-in-time production, which emphasizes the importance of only producing what is needed, when it is needed. In the context of software development, Kanban can be used to visualize the flow of work through a team, identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and implement policies to improve the flow of work. Kanban is often implemented using a physical or digital board that shows the different stages of work, from the time it is identified to the time it is completed. Each stage is represented by a column on the board, and work items are represented by cards that are moved from one column to another as they progress through the workflow.

5 factors of implementing a successful Kanban workflow

Adopting a successful Kanban workflow goes much beyond creating and moving cards in a board. If used correctly, a Kanban workflow can be a powerful way to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a team or organization. However, successfully implementing Kanban requires careful planning and a willingness to adapt to change. As we explore the five key factors in adopting a successful Kanban program, it's important to remember that these strategies are essential for creating an environment where everyone involved can work together with greater productivity and success.

Define the work process

The first phase in implementing Kanban is to define the work process that the team or organization will use. This process should be specific enough to provide guidance, but flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions. It should include:

1. The different stages of work
2. The roles and responsibilities of team members
3. The policies and practices that will be used to manage and improve the flow of work.

The following steps provide more details and guidance on how to define an effective work process for the team:

1. Identify the steps of the work process: The first activity is to clearly define the steps or tasks that need to be completed to fulfill a larger goal. It is important to be specific and break down the process into small, manageable steps. These tasks will then be used as the basis for all the other activities related to Kanban.
2. Assign a team: After the steps are identified, it is important to assign a team that can work together on completing the tasks. A project manager should be assigned to coordinate the team’s efforts, as well as monitor their progress and ensure that everyone is working efficiently.
3. Set time limits for each step: Once the team is in place, it is important to set time limits for each task or step to keep the workflow moving. This will help keep everyone accountable, as well as provide an estimated timeline for completion of the project.
4. Prioritize tasks: To maximize efficiency, it is important to prioritize tasks according to importance and urgency. This will help the team focus on what needs to be completed first and ensure that all work is completed in a timely manner.
5. Utilize Kanban boards: A Kanban board is an organizational tool used in Kanban workflow that visually displays each step of the process and helps manage workflow. The board should contain all the necessary information about each task, such as description, assignee, time limit, priority level, etc., so that everyone can easily view and understand where they are in the process at any given moment.

Since Kanban boards are one of the core elements of Kanban, the next section explores the details of how to maximize the efficiency and utility of Kanban boards.

Create a Kanban board

Once the work process has been defined, the next step is to create a Kanban board that visualizes the flow of work through the team or organization. The board should include columns for each stage of work, and it should be divided into swim lanes to show different categories of work, such as different types of tasks or different teams. The board should be accessible to all team members, and it should be updated in real time to reflect the status of each work item. The following suggestions can help you extract more value from your boards by modeling information and visuals that support the flow of work within your company.

1. Establish workflows: Once you have a defined goal for your project, it's time to establish workflows. Workflows are a great way to visualize all the steps involved in completing a set of tasks. In software development, for example, a workflow could look like something ranging from customer research, feature analysis, card refinement, implementation, testing, and release to production. This broad view of the steps involved in process also helps break down the activities into smaller chunks (as mentioned above), and to better visualize in which stage of the process a certain task is.
2. Create visuals: After establishing your workflows, create visuals that represent each step in the process. This could be images, charts, or diagrams that show what needs to be done at each stage of the project. A couple of examples of useful charts for visualizing, respectively, how much work is in each stage of a timeline and how the process looks from start to end include cumulative flow diagrams and swimlane diagrams.
3. Assign cards: Now that you have visuals that represent each step in the workflow, it's time to assign cards. Cards can include tasks such as code reviews, bug fixes, feature requests, etc. Assign these cards to individuals responsible for completing them, with specific deadlines attached to them if necessary. It’s crucial to keep the dependencies between cards in mind when performing this assignment, since a poor assignment may lead to lower overall utilization of resources (for example, idle resources waiting for the previous stage of the process to complete).

Establish work item policies

To effectively manage the flow of work, it is important to establish policies for each work item. These policies should define the criteria for starting work on a new item, the maximum amount of work that can be in progress at any given time, and the conditions under which work can be stopped or blocked. Additionally, these policies should be made clear to and agreed by all team members, and they should be followed consistently to ensure that the flow of work is managed effectively. Among the most important policies are:

1. Create a WIP limit: Set a Work-In-Progress (WIP) limit to control how many items are in progress at any given time and to maintain focus, reduce context switching, and eliminate multitasking. Omitting the WIP limit can lead to the team spreading itself too thin across many responsibilities and not actually completing any of them within a reasonable timeline.
2. Set timeboxed iterations: Break down complex work into smaller, more manageable chunks and set timeboxes for each iteration or sub-task. Estimating the necessary time per task is not always a straightforward task, but by iterating over previous estimations and incorporating data about deviations, the estimations should evolve towards more precision and reliability. Nonetheless, estimations should not be taken by the upper management as unconditional delivery contracts; rather, they are a best-effort forecast by the team with the current information at hand.
3. Define quality expectations: Define clear quality expectations for every work item and ensure that there is a shared understanding of what constitutes “good” work or the Scrum’s equivalent of “Definition of Done”.

Implement pull-based scheduling

In a Kanban workflow, work is pulled through the system by the team members who are responsible for each stage of work. This pull-based approach allows the team to respond to changing conditions and priorities, and it ensures that work is completed as efficiently as possible. To implement pull-based scheduling, team members should be trained to identify and prioritize the work that needs to be done, and they should be given the authority to decide when and how much work to take on.

1. Visualize and prioritize your workflow: Visualizing the workflow is key to implementing pull-based scheduling. This helps teams to identify bottlenecks in the process and makes it easier to see the flow of work. The visuals discussed above are very valuable for supporting this visualization. As a consequence, Kanban boards provide transparency and clarity, helping to ensure that tasks are completed quickly and efficiently. In addition to visuals, clear task priorities also give the team members a faster way to choose among the tasks they should pick up next.
2. Implement feedback loops and adapt to changes: Pull-based scheduling relies on feedback loops to ensure that tasks are completed on time and that the process is running smoothly. Additionally, pull-based scheduling is designed to be agile and adaptive. Teams should be prepared to adapt to changes in the workflow and adjust their approach accordingly. Regular retrospectives are a must to identify areas of improvement and ensure that tasks are completed in a timely manner.
3. Review workflows regularly: Regularly reviewing your Kanban workflows helps ensure that processes are running as expected, that pull-based scheduling is effectively implemented, and that bottlenecks or issues are identified early on so they can be addressed before they cause problems. Revisiting the workflows can be done during the retrospective meeting, although it’s more effective to dedicate a meeting entirely for it. Despite the higher number of meetings that results out of this configuration, the focus and clear boundaries of each meeting are likely to bring tangible benefits for everyone participating on them, as well as to better outcomes from each discussion.

Monitor and improve the flow of work

Implementing Kanban is not a one-time event, but rather an ongoing process of continuous improvement. To ensure that the Kanban workflow is effective, it is important to regularly monitor the flow of work and identify areas for improvement. This can be done through regular retrospectives, where the team reviews the work that has been completed and the team posture, and actively works towards identifying opportunities for improvement. Continuous improvement can also be done through the use of metrics, such as lead time and cycle time, which can provide valuable insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of the Kanban workflow.

To monitor metrics effectively, teams should track progress over time and analyze performance against goals. This will allow them to determine which processes are successful and which need improvement. Additionally, both qualitative and quantitative measures of success should be considered by the team. Qualitative measures, such as customer satisfaction or employee engagement surveys, can give valuable insight into how people feel about the project’s progress. Quantitative measures, such as cycle times or throughput, help teams understand if they are meeting their deadlines efficiently and accurately. Tracking this data over time allows for proactive decision-making based on reliable information, rather than relying on intuition alone. Below are three common metrics that can help you get started with quantitatively measuring the current state of your project and for later driving project improvements:

• Cycle time: measures the total amount of time it takes to complete a process or task from start to finish. It usually includes waiting times, processing times and any other delays. In software development, this could be the time it takes for a coder to refine a specific card, write the solution, write a comprehensive automated test suite, and debug any issues before pushing out a new feature. For example, if you started working on a feature at 9am Monday morning and finished by 3pm Tuesday afternoon, then your cycle time was 28 hours.
• Lead time: it is broader than the cycle time, and measures the total amount of elapsed time between when something was requested or initiated until it's delivered or available for use. In software development, this could be measured from when an idea/requirement was first discussed until it's released to production. If you started discussing a new feature suggestion with stakeholders on Monday morning and had it released to production two weeks later on Friday afternoon, your lead time would be 13 days (or 312 hours).
• Throughput: measures how much work can be done within a given period of time. This metric looks at both speed and efficiency by measuring how quickly tasks are being completed without sacrificing quality. In software development, throughput might measure things such as how many lines of code have been written per hour or even how many features have been released in a month's timeline. For example, if developers wrote 500 lines of code each day for 5 days straight, then their throughput was 2500 lines over that week's timeframe (500 x 5).

Although metrics are very useful to quantify, visualize and improve processes, they should not be taken as a measure of comparison between team members nor as standards to be followed by developers at all times. Throughput, for example, varies due to many factors, including the project phase the team is currently in, the difficulty of the task, the degree of motivation, among other reasons. Metrics provide a starting point for conversations around identifying anomalies in productivity, inefficiencies in processes, and opportunities for improvements, but they should not be taken as the single source of truth for employee performance evaluation.

Communicate, experiment, and adjust continuously

Finally, communication and continuous adaptation are crucial for a successful implementation of a Kanban system in software development. Communication is essential for teams to stay on track with their projects and ensure that everyone is aware of their responsibilities and progress towards their goals. Having regular check-ins and touchpoints can help ensure that everyone is working together effectively and efficiently.

As you monitor progress and evolve your practices, don’t be afraid to experiment with different approaches or new tools to see what works best for your team and process. By actively adjusting and refining your Kanban workflow over time, you’ll be able to find an optimal system that works for your organization and improves the overall flow of work within it.

Kanban is an effective system for software organizations to increase productivity and efficiency. This article outlines the steps necessary to successfully implement Kanban, including understanding employee roles, establishing team rules and policies, setting expectations, providing feedback and support, and tracking performance. Additionally, the article discusses the five key factors of a successful Kanban workflow, such as defining the work process, creating a Kanban board, establishing work item policies, and implementing pull-based scheduling. By following these tips, software businesses can take advantage of the many benefits that come with using Kanban.